


Breathe

by Avengerz



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Buried Alive, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 16:46:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8409133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avengerz/pseuds/Avengerz
Summary: Tony wakes with a cough, a rattling thing that shakes his rib cage. The air is thick and musty around him and it makes breathing difficult in a way he thought he’d left behind with the arc reactor. He blinks into the darkness, presses a hand to his aching chest, and his elbow knocks against something that sounds like wood. He frowns and reaches towards the wood and his fingers brush rough grain a few inches from his face and suddenly it clicks.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MusicalLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/gifts).



> I didn't mean to write this but Musicalluna started talking about it so here we are with a rushed, non-betaed ficlet.

Tony wakes with a cough, a rattling thing that shakes his rib cage. The air is thick and musty around him and it makes breathing difficult in a way he thought he’d left behind with the arc reactor. He blinks into the darkness, presses a hand to his aching chest, and his elbow knocks against something that sounds like wood. He frowns and reaches towards the wood and his fingers brush rough grain a few inches from his face and suddenly it clicks.

“No.” The word is a gasp in thick air and oh god, _air_ , how much air does he have, how long does he have, he _needs to breathe-_

Tony strikes out against the wood with the palms of his hands and there’s a solid thud, thick wood with dirt packed down on top of it, and he breathes, quick and fast in too-thick, too-little air, gasping for breath, kicking, clawing at the _coffin,_ ** _fuck!_**

“Help,” he calls, blind terror, “help, please, fuck, I’m alive, _I’m alive_.”

No one answers, of course they don’t, who knows how far under the earth he is. And besides, Tony thinks, hysterically, who would come even if they heard him call?

“Fuck,” he says once more, emphatically, and his heart is pounding against his paper-thin ribs and his hands shake where he presses them into the wood above him and his breath comes too fast but he tries to think, because he’s a genius, damn it, he’s not an animal, he can _think._ He whispers it to himself, “come on, Tony, think,” and it’s the only sound in his tomb.

“Who did this,” he says, because he doesn’t remember, and if he closes his eyes and doesn’t breath in the dirt he can almost pretend he’s back in his lab, throwing rhetorical questions at JARVIS as he out-thinks the Avenger’s latest nemesis, but that’s not right either, because JARVIS is gone and so are the Avengers and he is alone.

Tony laughs, high and sharp and a waste of air. “Some genius you are,” he says, bitter. “ _Think._ Maybe you should have thought before you drove off the only people who cared about you.”

There’s still Rhodey, some part of him argues, and he laughs again. “Sure, there’s Rhodey, your best friend, the guy that’s probably in PT right now, because you _fucking paralyzed him.”_ And he can’t think about paralysis, because he has _inches_ of space around him, and, “oh god, I’m going to die here.”

It hits him then, really. The air is growing thinner, his lungs straining around it, and his great genius is useless here, and he is going to die.

He is going to die alone, and gasping for air, and he’d thought that, once, in an Afghan cave. But then he’d been saved, by Yinsen’s gentle hands and Pepper’s red eyes and a team that ~~loved~~   ~~liked~~ tolerated him, and now he’s lost it all.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps to their memories. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.” He’s breathing fast, useless, and he imagines a thud against the wood above him and he whispers into the dark, “sorry, I’m sorry, sorrysorry _sorry,”_ and then the words stop and so does he.


	2. Chapter 2

“We have to find him.” Clint is pacing, tightly-leashed energy through the crisp lines of Tony’s lab. The last place he was seen.

“I know that,” Steve sounds his age, old and exhausted as he hunches over in Tony’s ergonomic work chair and any other time Natasha would be worried, a concern that she’d show with a look and a quirked eyebrow, but this is bigger than Steve, bigger than Clint, bigger than all of them, because Tony is gone, and she stays where she is, leaning against a wall and watching the scene with sharp eyes.

They’re all there, the old team, against all odds, and it’s almost like it was, once, when they’d gather in the lab to accept the new weapons he’d made for them, love poured into every gear. But now Thor seems small on the ratty couch, his knuckles white around Mjolnir’s handle, and now Bruce is breathing slow and deep and his eyes are closed but green, and Rhodey is collapsed in a chair, his features drawn tight in pain more than physical, and now Tony isn’t here, and now Natasha doesn’t know what to do.

There’s a sudden crackle of static. “Friday?” Bruce says, but Natasha strides across the room to the source of the sound. It’s a sleek tablet, innocuous in a lab full of wonders, but when she picks it up, there’s another crackle.

“Ah,” a voice, male, lightly accented with something Eastern-European, “have the would-be Avengers noticed someone missing from their ranks?” A laughter, high and insane, and Natasha doesn’t know who they’re dealing with.

She has no times for tricks, and she asks, “who are you?”

The man ignores her, maybe can’t hear her. “Oh, but you don’t have much ranks at all anymore, do you? No even noticed as I stole away your prized inventor.” The air is thick with tension and Natasha doesn’t mean anyone’s eyes. “Perhaps unity can be restored, though,” the man hums, pondering, then giggles again and he’s a psychopath and Natasha will _skin him._ “If you can get there in time!”

Then the line clicks off and there are numbers, glowing red on the black screen, coordinates.

They run.

They run and they fly and they end up in a clearing in the woods of northern New York, and there’s nothing there. “There is nothing here,” Thor says, thunder in his voice and in his eyes. “Those coordinates were wrong.”

But Natasha ignores him, can’t give up that easily, walks around the clearing. It is Clint and his sharp eyes that spot the newly turned dirt. “There!”

Just then, the tablet in Natasha’s hands, forgotten but not abandoned, crackles again. This time, there are no taunting words, nothing at all at first, and then Bruce says, hushed, “someone’s breathing.”

They fall quiet, listening, and so they can all hear the breath speed up, the noises, Natasha knows, of a man waking, and something clenches hard and painful in her chest because she knows what this is. There’s the shuffle of fabric, a knock on wood, and then, quiet but distinct, “no.” As one, the former Avengers turn to look at the fresh earth.

Bruce hulks out, immediately, takes a trembling step back from them and then he is green and breathing heavily and shouting, “METAL MAN.”

It takes a second longer for the rest of the team to understand. Clint locks up, every muscle in his body tense as he stares at the pile of dirt. Steve gasps, sharp and quick, and goes pale, his fingers slack around his shield. Thor roars his anger into the sky and thunder responds. Rhodey is faceless inside War Machine, but he stumbles over nothing and falls to the ground, braces himself on his hands and is horribly silent.

Natasha puts the tablet up to her ear because her teammates (and that’s what they are now, united through loss and determination) are loud, so loud, but Tony obviously cannot hear them because he’s speaking now, saying “help, help, please.” They’re right above him but he doesn’t know and his voice is high and tight with terror and Natasha feels sick. “I’m alive,” Tony says, “ _I’m alive_.”

‘I know,’ Natasha wants to scream, but she doesn’t because that’s not useful. So she turns to the Hulk instead, points at the ground. Orders, cold and direct, “dig.”

The Hulk doesn’t have to be persuaded, doesn’t hesitate. He digs, giant hands like shovels, fast and determined. Dirt flies everywhere, and they step back. There is nothing to do but wait and watch and so they gather around Natasha again and so they hear Tony, cursing and trying to wrangle his great genius into something other than pure animal panic.

“ _Think.”_  He says, scoffing at himself, and Natasha hears Clint’s bow creak in his grasp. “Maybe you should have thought before you drove off the only people who cared about you.”

“No,” Steve says, the word pulled from him. “No, he didn’t-”

Natasha glares at him, because she needs to hear this. “Shut up.”

He does, stricken, and Tony is still speaking, saying, “there’s Rhodey, your best friend, the guy that’s probably in PT right now, because you _fucking paralyzed him.”_

Rhodey sucks in a breath like he’s been punched and his face-plate is up, and his eyes gleam with tears. “Tones…”

“Oh, god.” Natasha looks over at Bruce, but that maniac buried him _deep_ , impossibly far under the earth, and the Hulk is still digging. “I’m going to die here.”

And Natasha wants to shake him, wants to shout at him, tell him,  _‘no, no you’re not! We’re here, we’re right above you!’_ But maybe they’re not. Terror suddenly strikes her, because Bruce is still digging and what if this is a wild goose chase, what if Tony is gasping for breath somewhere and they’re not there to help him.

Tony’s apologizing now, babbling, “I’m sorry, sorry, I’m sorry,  _sorry_ ,” and Thor is crying and Clint’s eyes are squeezed shut and Natasha remembers how he told her, once, that when things get bad enough he prays to a god he doesn’t believe in.

And then, and _then,_  there’s a thunk, and the Hulk roars victoriously, and Tony has fallen silent but it’s okay because the Hulk pries at something in the ground and wood goes flying and then he is climbing out of the hole and Tony is there, impossibly small in his arms.

They all run, but Natasha gets their first, falls to her knees next to Tony as Bruce lowers him carefully to the ground. “Tony,” she gasps, weakness, because he is still and silent in a way that Tony Stark should never be. It is not in her nature to defeat, and she leans forward and breathes life into him, pounds his weak, stubborn, heart, mutters, “come on, Tony, _come on,”_ because she has lost too much, they all have.

And then, and _then,_  Tony gasps and coughs, his chest shaking under Natasha’s hands. Steve cries out, and Natasha sits back as Tony’s eyes flutter open, as he stares at them, groggy. “Tony,” she breathes, then, “don’t ever do that again,  идиот.”

“What?” Tony is painfully confused. “You’re here?”

Steve leans over him, clasps a hand that is bloodied from desperate clawing, and there’s tears in his eyes and he says, “we’re here, Tony, of course we’re here.”

“Why?” Natasha has lived through unspeakable horrors, and she will never forget how lost Tony’s voice is.

“Because you needed us, idiot,” Clint says, and his voice is soft, but it’s clear that Tony isn’t comprehending, and he flinches at the perceived insult.

“I’m not a-” he mumbles, falters, “I’m an idiot?”

“No,” Natasha says, firm and indisputable. “You’re a genius, and our friend.”

Tony stares, so confused, so lost, and Rhodey gently nudges Steve aside, leans over Tony and says, “we’re always gonna be here for you, Tones.” Tony blinks. “Always,” Rhodey repeats, and Tony shudders and closes his eyes and Natasha thinks he’s finally listening to them.

He doesn’t believe them yet, Natasha knows, but that’s okay, for now, because they have time. They have time, because Tony is here, safe with them, and they’re going to keep it that way.

**Author's Note:**

> You can read more of my stuff at my [tumblr!](http://anthonyfuckingstark.tumblr.com)


End file.
